Brother accuses Samsung boss of being greedy

The elder brother of Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-Heesaid Monday he would not drop his lawsuit over a family inheritance and accused his sibling — South Korea’s richest man — of being greedy.

“Kun-Hee has aggravated a discord among brothers, always taking care of his own gain,” Lee Maeng-Hee, 80, said in a statement released through his lawyer, adding he would press on with his case.

Maeng-hee, eldest son of Samsung’s late founder Lee Byung-Chull, described his brother as “greedy”.

Kun-Hee, 70, was in February accused by his elder brother and sister of taking over some shares inSamsung Group subsidiaries left by their father.

Maeng-Hee said that after the death of his father in 1987, Kun-Hee took over the shares which the father had held under the names of other people.

He demanded his brother return some shares in Samsung units along with cash, worth 710 billion won ($623 million) in total. Their sister Lee Sook-Hee followed with a separate suit.

Last week Kun-Hee, the second son, said he would not give “a single dime” to his brother and sister and would fight the lawsuits to the end.

He said the inheritance issue was settled long ago while their father was alive and accused his brother and sister of being a “bit greedy”.

Maeng-Hee in his statement expressed upset at his brother’s “childish remarks”. Sook-Hee in a separate statement said she was “really indignant” at Kun-Hee’s comments and accused him of covering up the truth.

Lee Byung-Chull, who in 1938 founded the company that is now South Korea’s largest business group, had three sons and five daughters.

Kun-Hee has pushed Samsung Electronics to become the world’s top chipmaker and the second-largest mobile phone maker behind Nokia.

He was South Korea’s richest man in 2010, according to a Forbes Asia list which estimated his worth at the time at $7.9 billion.